RFU uses content marketing to increase site traffic by 27%

The Rugby Football Union managed to increase site traffic by 27% by creating a tool that gives fans real time insight into the England team and individual performances on-pitch using IBM's big data analytics technology.

The Anheuser–Busch InBev brand also took the second spot and has finally eclipsed Volkswagen as the most shared brand of all time. Although Volkswagen’s Star Wars themed ‘The Force’ still sits at number one in the top 20 most shared Super Bowl ads of all time chart.

This is the second year running that Budweiser has topped the table. Last year’s ‘Brotherhood' advert is currently the third most shared Super Bowl ad of all time, with 2.8m shares. 1.5m of which it achieved by Super Bowl Monday.

Esurance wins the Twitter Super Bowl

According to Twitter, this year’s Super Bowl Final generated 24.9m tweets, with hashtags mentioned in 57% of Super Bowl ads. The advertising battle started early, with 30 official Super Bowl ads online by Friday 21 January.

And a blog by SocialBro shows that in the hours following Sunday’s match, Esurance increased its follower count by 710% and netted over 200,000 mentions on Twitter within one minute.

Realising the value of social, Esurance’s marketing team decided not to advertise on television during the game. Instead, it booked the first commercial slot after the final whistle, used it to announce a Twitter sweepstake with a prize of $1.5m (the money saved by not advertising in-play) and watched the mentions of its hashtag roll in.

Why do online retailers need live chat?

In a recent survey by idealo, only a small number of UK retailers offered live chat as a customer service channel, and in the rest of Europe, an average of 18% of retailers offered access to live chat.

The most popular method of contact from the survey is by writing, with an average of 91% of all online shops offering contact via email or contact form. Although I’m surprised this figure isn’t even higher.

Major gambling brands hit hard by Google update

Major brands including 888, Spin Palace, Tombola and Cheeky Bingo have suffered dramatic losses in online visibility following two key Google algorithm updates, according to insight from the latest Stickyeyes online gambling and betting report.

The changes, which aim to penalise brands that adopt what Google deems to be aggressive or unnatural link strategies, saw 888 fall from being one of the most visible brands in the casino sector to as low as 17th in Stickyeyes’ index in the space of just one month. Other brands experienced even more dramatic falls, with Gambling.com falling from fifth to outside the top 100 in the space of just two months.

71% of businesses plan to increase digital marketing budgets this year

This increase is largely driven by digital channels, with 71% of companies planning to increase the amount they invest in digital marketing. In comparison only a fifth of companies (20%) are planning to increase traditional budgets over the next year.

The findings come from the new Econsultancy/Responsys Marketing Budgets Report 2014, which is based on a survey of more than 600 client-side marketers and agency respondents within Econsultancy’s community.

What best describes your plans for your overall marketing budget in 2014?

Marketers spend one day a month researching digital marketing trends

Search engine optimisation is the most popular subject, with 45% of our respondents spending more than two days a month reading up on SEO.

The in-depth report also looks at how companies are using various digital marketing channels, including paid search, search engine optimisation (natural search) and social media marketing.

It follows a survey of over 400 respondents from both companies (client-side advertisers) and agencies, collected in November 2013.

Public display of affection

A poll conducted by Facebook found that almost two-thirds of men and women in the UK begin planning for Valentine's Day on February 7, however 23% of women and 31% of men buy gifts or book romantic nights out on the day itself.

Every day in the UK, Facebook reaches 24m people, with 20m logging on via mobile devices. And on Valentine’s Day they’re especially active, with a 1.2x increase in photo uploads compared to the week before.

According to Facebook data, over 317,000 UK users changed their relationship status within a week of Valentine’s Day last year, while around 27,000 changed their status to 'engaged'.

Shazamable Super Bowl breaks records

Shazam has announced that this year’s Super Bowl broadcast was the company’s most successful to date, with exclusive content from Bruno Mars and featured advertisers helping drive more than 700,000 Shazams of the broadcast, leading to millions of interactions.

While there were a number of spikes in Shazam activity, the half time performance of Bruno Mars and Red Hot Chili Peppers singing 'Give It Away' saw the biggest spike in activity.

You might be interested in

Comments (4)

I love the blog and the suggestions it`s offering. I also like the highlights on stats and on live chat customer service which in nowadays I consider one of the most needs for online marketers.
What marketers don`t really understand how important is to care about their customer.
And I`ve written few articles on my blog about that.

Please leave a comment and let`s get this right.

Marco.

about 4 years ago

Dmitriy Ivanov, Head Of Digital Strategy at Spread Digital

I agree with Marco Econsultancy is a great blog, lot's of useful stats and information

Casinos and casino affiliates have long been some of the most tenacious black-hat offenders - so it's great to see Google step up their attempts at tackling them.

I'm looking forward to seeing some differentiation amongst the casino sites. I have a suspicion that the first casino site to adopt content marketing in a serious way is going to clean up - strategy resources, guides and helpful blog content. Time will tell - assuming Google keeps the pressure up!

Enjoying this article?

Get more just like this, delivered to your inbox.

Keep up to date with the latest analysis, inspiration and learning from the Econsultancy blog with our free Digital Pulse newsletter. You will receive a hand-picked digest of the latest and greatest articles, as well as snippets of new market data, best practice guides and trends research.